Enthusiasms and expostulations, by Glenn Kenny

January 31, 2013

How David Mamet gets away with it

Last week in Newsweek, or some online entity bearing the Newsweek logo, David Mamet published an essay about gun laws that I didn't pay much attention to, largely because at first glance it was sufficiently boilerplate in a not even Peak Wingnut fashion—you know, "Karl Marx, blah blah blah, Founding Fathers blah blah blah, no you're wrong if you think that's what the police are for blah blah blah"—that it would appear to lack the requisite negative entertainment value I look for in such items. The column did excite the disapprobation of many of my fellows on The Left, and with good reason, and I was actually stimulated by something that Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote on his blog at The Atlantic, where he also linked to a similar musing by the great Scott Lemieux at the Lawyers, Guns & Money blog, wherein both men point out that Mamet's assertion that the "Founding Fathers" were "not even politicians" is, not to put too fine a point on it, utter bullshit. Coates goes on to wax not inappropriately indignantly about how he finds "the processs that produces this sort of work to be utterly amoral." That's one way of putting it. I not only have a window into this process, I was party to it back in my print days. One example, of a decidedly different scale than what Coates is talking about, but illuminating nonethless, involved Mr. Mamet himself.

I don't remember exactly when it was, but I seem to recollect the early part of the current century. One of my colleagues at Premiere, the guy in charge of the front-of-the-book section "Action," which was where we put the bitsy stuff, had heard from Mamet's agent—with guys like Mamet it's always the agent you hear from—who told him that Mamet had been experimenting with cartooning, and wondering if our magazine would be interested in running a monthly one-panel cartoon by David Mamet. We would pay for it, of course, and pay pretty heftily, because he was David Mamet. As I recall the fee would be something like the one a writer would get for a five-hundred word piece if he or she were to be paid a dollar a word.

Mamet's drawing style, if it could be referred to as a style, made James Thurber look like Gustave Dore. The jokes animating the cartoons were mixed. I honestly can't recollect any; I have a vague picture of a fake movie poster advertising a blockbuster picture about a giant octopus, and there was at least one lampooning movie executives, no duh, but that's about all I can conjure. (I did go through my limited collection of Premiere back issues looking for an example but came up with zilch. I did find the issue containing my pan of The Good German, though, I better get rid of that...) The point is the cartoons were largely not great, and when they were worse than not great they were embarassing. One thing I do recall, very clearly, and I think it's something that really summed up Mamet's contempt for the enterprise and contempt for us—contempt that, now that I think about it, we had, in a sense, wholly earned for indulging him this way—was that he submitted his "drawings" on lined notebook paper. He knew enough about magazine mechanicals to know these lines would be erased photographically. But the idea that he couldn't even be bothered to invest a little of the money were were paying him to, you know, get some fucking drawing paper (which he then could have written off as a business expense, as I'm sure he must have known) speaks volumes. Fortunately he had a contract. I say fortunately because it was a short term contract, and it soon expired, and we did not pursue its renewal, and Mamet's agent understood our not pursuing its renewal to mean that Mamet had tired of the enterprise himself and was busy with other things and so would not be able to continue. In other words, his contempt for us was such that he wanted us to understand that not continuing this exercise in mortification was HIS idea. This was the personal cherry on the top of his short con, and I have to give it to him: this short con was a nice one.

It was not too long after this misadventure ended that Mamet and his friend and collaborator Ricky Jay appeared at New York's Town Hall for a staged chat entitled "Two Hussies." It would essentially be Mamet and Jay discussing "the state of the performing arts." I went with some pals, among them at least one successful writer who idolized the author of Glengary Glen Ross and other theatrical pieces. And while Ricky Jay was his usual droll self on that stage, the author of Glengarry Glen Ross oozed such oily pompous self-satisfaction that we walked out en masse after less than forty minutes. I hasten to add that this was well before Mamet's much-bruited conservative conversion that's supposed to be the reason I don't like him. (October 2001, this was.)

Anyway, Coates nails it when he says "You cannot change the fact that Thomas Jefferson served in the Virginia House of Burgesses because it's unfortunate for your argument. Unless you have a name like David Mamet. Assuming that Mamet's Newsweek piece had an editor (and it's entirely possible and plausible that Tina Brown just pushed it into digital print after only allowing some copy person or other to give it a perfunctory proofing), that editor would likely have had no contact with Mamet himself. When you're dealing with a name like David Mamet, you submit your proposed changes through a third party, and that third party, usually an agent, gets back to you, and fairly often says "no" to your proposed changes, or sometimes not. (A couple of months ago I ran into Martin Amis in a magazine store in my neighborhood and because I'm such a schmuck I semi-sheepishly introduced myself and said to him "We worked with each other once. Via fax.") But again. I'm sure that the relevant people involved, the people with the power, merely said, if the idea even occured to them at all, "Fact-check David Mamet? Well, did you evah?" or some such thing.

Of course, fact-checkers themselves are like cops. There are good ones and there are bad ones. An associate of mine who works for a prominent person has recently had cause to be in correspondence with several fact-checkers, and they have been inundating my associate with questions such as "can you confirm whether X was a 'consultant' on the project or a 'special advisor'?" and for all sorts of other bits of data that could actually be gleaned via consultation of reliable and easily available outside documantation. But just as Premiere's publication of "The Mamet Version" (for this is what his cartoon feature was called) was a function of our own star-fucking tendencies—which we rationalized by telling ourselves that were weren't just indulging Mamet on account of his name but because of the great, iconic work he had produced, that we were counting on his talent—so too do fact-checkers (the bad ones) go places where they're not needed, or wanted, simply because it puts them in closer proximity to the famous subjects of the articles they're working on.

For example: At Premiere there was one fact-checker I considered a particular annoyance, because he did things like call Woody Allen's actual production office to verify the number of Oscars Annie Hall had won. Also, when we had occasion to make a reference to the actor Ron Perlman, he called the offices of Revlon to verify the spelling of the name. (This will be more fun for you to figure out yourself if you don't get it already. Trust me.) It is perhaps no accident that the fact-checker in question was (and, I suppose, remains) the son of a relatively well-known, and not particularly well-liked, political pundit. As they say, that's show biz.

This was delightful! Thanks so much. The opportunity afforded Mamet based on his celebrity reminds me of Bill O'Reilly's bestseller [God help us] on the Lincoln assassination. Next up, Lena Dunham's treatise on the Middle East.

I kinda sorta worship Soderbergh as a god, and I was totally disappointed in The Good German. So you're not alone! bit.ly/14tGDAx
Mamet, meanwhile, remains a complete fucking tool. Anyone who grew up around elderly Jews is all too familiar with his spittle-flecked incoherence.

As much as I still love (or like a lot) many of the movies he directed and/or wrote, I have to say the bloom fell off of Mamet for me long before his political conversion, and it was with "On Directing". Not only was that the first time he indulged in what most people who have commented here (if not all) seemed to agree was a tiresome critical position (in order to elevate someone you like, denigrate someone you don't like even if the comparison between them is tenuous at best) in his screed against Method acting. Far be it for me to say there aren't valid criticisms to be made of the Method, but often, it seemed he made the most specious of them (comparing it to flat roofs?). Not only that, but he has maintained this position in similar books and/or essays he's written about movies and theater, conveniently forgetting some of the best performances involving his screenplays have come from actors identified with the Method; Paul Newman in THE VERDICT, Al Pacino and Alec Baldwin in GLENGARRY GLENN ROSS (is Ed Harris Method? He would seem to be, but I don't know if he's ever identified himself as such), Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman in WAG THE DOG (and De Niro again in RONIN), and Baldwin again in STATE AND MAIN.

Changing subjects; I too was disappointed in THE GOOD GERMAN, and even a second viewing didn't change my mind.

David Mamet never really had to "convert" to being a conservative because he was never really a liberal to begin with--he probably just thought he was a liberal because he supported civil rights back in the 60s and 70s. At this point in his life his political beliefs are worse than just wrong--they've also severely hindered his writing process. His latest play on Broadway, The Anarchist, was a colossal failure. He directed Patti LuPone and Debra Winger to basically be cutouts for a political argument he wanted to shove down the audience's throat. It's a shame as well, because his early work for the theatre is stunning, and his screenplay for The Verdict one of the best ever written. But now he's just become a right-wing stooge.

Has your only experience with the blog been this post? I'd say it's pretty rare that Glenn "gets political" and, when he does, he's pretty graciously/refreshingly nonpartisan (ie he tends to think for himself). Or maybe you've only read this post AND all of David Ehrensteins comments on the other posts.

As a lurker on this thread and simeone whi hasnt seen Tony Furniture or Girls, I was gonna let the last comment sit, but I just ran into the latest cover of Entertainment Weekly on a newsstand and it rankled. While Dunham herself may or may not be to blame, she is repeatedly been held up as a spokesperson in the media, the so-called 'voice of a generation' despite the fact that the lifestyle and sensibility represented in her material, by all accounts (favorable and otherwise), is no more than a tiny niche of young American experience, and is in many ways quite dramatically different from what most young millennial a experience. Again, maybe not her fault, but Evelyn's comment strikes me as a fair tweaking of the hype machine's penchant for assuming its own experience is universal (or simply not caring that it isn't).

As a lurker on this thread and someone who hasnt seen Tiny Furniture or Girls, I was gonna let the last comment sit, but I just ran into the latest cover of Entertainment Weekly on a newsstand and it rankled. While Dunham herself may or may not be to blame, she has repeatedly been held up as a spokesperson in the media, the so-called 'voice of a generation' despite the fact that the lifestyle and sensibility on display in her material, by all accounts (favorable and otherwise) represents no more than a small niche of young Americans. Again, maybe not her fault, but Evelyn's comment strikes me as a fair tweaking of the hype machine's penchant for assuming its own experience is universal (or simply not caring that it isn't).

I'd say it's definitely NOT Dunham's fault. She makes a great show (and the very first episode has her character saying "I think I may be the voice of my generation," then amending it to "A voice of A generation"). To me, the best thing about GIRLS it that it is very specific to its characters and makes no special pleas about their experiences being representative of any others'. It's a shame the fawning press coverage has turned off a sizable number of people who might otherwise find much to like in the show.

I got some bad vibes from some of the Tiny Furniture write-ups (many of them on this very blog, natch) but yeah, like I said, sight unseen I can't blame Dunham for the hype surrounding her (or even riding it for what it's worth once it's already there, that is as long as the show itself doesn't harbor the same self-importance). I have no problem believing the entertainment media is to blame.

All in all it isn't the alleged 'self-absorbed, immature upper class urban youth' milieu that bugs me per se (after all, I love Lost in Translation, and that's as guilty of elitist narcissism as anything). Nor even the potential pretentiousness of trying to speak for a generation - actually I wish more young people harbored such 'pretensions'.

Rather, it's the conflation of the two. More often than not, I see my peers marrying, having kids, working hard, serving in the military, etc, in other words assuming a lot of responsibility but against a far more unstable backdrop than other recent generations, including their parents' (particularly when those parents are boomers). It frustrates me that the self-enclosed, exclusive media world presumes that its own experience (and what it sees in its own children - aren't all the members of the Girls cast daughters of famous figures?) somehow epitomizes broader experiences.

Moreover, it isn't just a generational thing. In the era of Occupy and Obama, we are perversely seeing a sharp turn away from populism in entertainment, at least as far as the experiences being conveyed. This bothers me.

Again, if she's as talented and funny as her reputation suggests, Dunham deserves her success (although plenty of other people probably do as well, who won't get the same chances, just sayin'). But the media deserves to be called out for treating her as some kind of millennial guru, just as much as it does for giving Mamet a front cover for his dopey 'Lemme tell ya about this Karl Marx fella' schtick. And I think it fits in quite well with the whole 'celebrities shit gold' mentality Glenn skewers in the piece.

While it's certainly not impossible to mine comedy from people marrying, having kids, working hard, serving in the military and otherwise being responsible, it's a few degrees more difficult, and perhaps a tougher sell to an audience. So there's that.

Also, without knowing all that much about it, I have assumed that Dunham made her own breaks in the entertainment biz. Her parents are successful in the arts, and they put her through college, but that's true of a lot of people who DON'T become noted writer/director/actor/producers in their early '20s. She started out making youtube shorts, and made her name on the strength of an inexpensive feature. She has chosen her collaborators well, but she has a distinctive voice, which, like anything else, is not for everyone. But much of the criticism that I see of her feels like envy. Hell, I'M envious, but I think she makes great television.

Well, like I said, I don't want to focus too heavily in Dunham herself, for 3 reasons: a) I haven't watched her stuff, so I'm in no position to judge; b) from what I know/hear, she HASN'T proclaimed herself the voice of a generation (except in half-joking/mocking form, probably more after other people did so first), so it's unfair to hold her to task for the hype or even for riding it as any sensible person trying to promote their material would; c) heck, I already KNOW I'm envious as hell so I know any direct, personal criticism if Dunham would be colored by that! (Side note: it seems harder than ever for young people to break into mainstream filmmaking recognition; where are our Andersons, Tarantinos, Coens, Spielbergs, etc? Virtually every well-known director I can think of, outside the neo-neorealist and mumblecore niches, is over 35, usually well over 40.)

No, I'd rather focus on the media hype because that's the problem. As for how she broke through, she may not have needed help to make her movie but how did it get seen? Praised? How many debuts leapfrog right into the Criterion Collection? I recall Glenn himself making these points a few years back. It's not to denigrate her - again, as a Lost in Translation fan I can't begrudge filmmakers using their connections to get their vision out there. But it certainly does not make her or her path very typical or encouraging, and in conjunction with her milieu makes 'VoG' proclamations seem way out of whack.

Also disagree with the comedy thing; back in the Depression you had a healthy mix of films set amongst the rich and fabulous, and set amongst the hard-working and hardscrabble. Including, in the latter category, any number of comedies, musicals, and supposedly 'escapist' entertainments that nonetheless did a better job reflecting social reality than many of the supposedly 'realistic' pictures today.

I didn't say comedies about hardworking folks didn't exist--just that they're a little harder to pull off successfully.

As for Dunham's path, I wasn't sure exactly what it was either, so I did a little Googling--it appears that she did a web series and some shorts while still in school, then made a short feature called CREATIVE NONFICTION, also while still in school, shooting/editing it on weekends while babysitting to make ends meet. She entered the rough cut into SXSW, didn't make it, submitted a new cut the following year and got in. That film didn't find distribution. Her parents put up the money for TINY FURNITURE (est. budget $65,000), and Dunham hired friends and family to save money. It was shot on the Canon 7D. The finished product got in SXSW and won the Narrative Feature Film award. It won some other awards, too, and I assume that led to its limited theatrical release. Don't know how Criterion got involved. Of course, the critical success of the film and media attention for Dunham led directly to GIRLS.

Tennessee Coats' argument doesn't hold water. Mamet isn't "Lying" when he says the Founding Fathers weren't politicians. The fact that someone at one point in their lives runs for office or holds office doesn't neccessary make them a "politician" - here's the definition of "politician" per the on-line dictionary:

One who seeks personal or partisan gain, often by scheming and maneuvering: "Mothers may still want their favorite sons to grow up to be President, but . . . they do not want them to become politicians in the process" (John F. Kennedy).

Mamet always is discussing the Constitution and the Founding fathers. Jefferson was just one of them and wasn't involved in drafting or passing it. Saying someone is lying about the "Founding Fathers" by pointing to just Jefferson is in itself a LIE.

Ha ha ha, RC Ocean, I see what you did, making a racist joke that you will deny being a racist joke.

Anyway. It's not just Jefferson. Adams, Madison, Burr, Hamilton: all politicians of some sort, and lawyers before that. Madison specifically studied law for the purpose of using it to shape public policy. Mamet, by implication, wants to push the horseshit notion that the founder were simple planters who just wanted government to leave them alone. No. They wanted to form a new government, and to head it. They were politicians. Fucking politicians, even. But nice try.

J, all in all I'm not sure I radically disagree with you on Dunham. The point about her path to success is tangential (although it remains, considering both the inimitable funding source and subject matter, the latter of which also happens to be a big part of the film's - and later the show's - appeal to the media). My major point is that I think it's legit to call the entertainment media to task for acting as if Dunham's vision/world speaks for the majority of her generation, which it doesn't. Not to belabor the point, but I'd say the same thing about Sofia Coppola, were the same claims made for her (although she's obviously a different generation). And she's probably my favorite American director of her own age group. So it's not necessarily a knock on the artist, just the hype.

"Ha ha ha, RC Ocean, I see what you did, making a racist joke that you will deny being a racist joke."

I'll accept "childish play on a name" but not "Joke". TC has an extremely odd name, he has a hyphen in his first name, and that "e" in his last name throws me. As an aside, I also think 'Adam Gopnik' has a funny last name. I can just imagine what the poor kid got called in school.

Joel: We certainly don't disagree about the media fawning re Dunham. Luckily, she seems to be handling it well and going about her business. It will be interesting to see her progress with GIRLS and beyond.

Heavens! I had no idea that my joke about Lena Dunham would spark such a digression. My joke was based on the "halo effect" afforded to those famous in one profession being assumed to have knowledge about another. I could have as well said Jennifer Lawrence or Wes Anderson. And I bet even Dunham would laugh!

"it seems harder than ever for young people to break into mainstream filmmaking recognition; where are our Andersons, Tarantinos, Coens, Spielbergs, etc? Virtually every well-known director I can think of, outside the neo-neorealist and mumblecore niches, is over 35, usually well over 40.)"

Maybe that's because many young people today really don't give a shit about feature films, except as fodder to yak with their friends about.

"it seems harder than ever for young people to break into mainstream filmmaking recognition; where are our Andersons, Tarantinos, Coens, Spielbergs, etc? Virtually every well-known director I can think of, outside the neo-neorealist and mumblecore niches, is over 35, usually well over 40.)"

How old is Jeff Nichols? Because he's the first guy that came to mind, for me. Anxiously awaiting his MUD. I was a little surprised to find that Shane Carruth, on the eve of only his 2nd feature, just turned 40.

But in a larger sense, yeah, there isn't anything like the same kind of "generational" group out there. But there's no reason to think that we ought to have a perfect analogue to the Indie scene of the 90s. With all of the flux regarding the funding and distribution of material (a lot of which does seem to offer big potential to indie people) - VOD, kickstarter, etc - it's hard to know what will emerge next, but I have a cautiously optimistic feeling about it. Provided the world doesn't end first, of course.

@ Mike, yes but not just young people. That's why I think a lot of the "death of cinema" talk, however pre/portentious, was on to something. That said...

@Zach, I remain cautiously optimistic as well for the reasons you list among others. (And btw, it isn't so much an analogue to the indie scene I'm looking for as an analogue to about three or four generations' worth of young filmmakers emerging with new visions, from new platforms - independent cinema, but film school/New Hollywood before that, and live TV and/or theater before that; and I agree, internet's gotta be the venue but damn if I can't figure out how that's gonna work yet.)

Must admit I'm not familiar with either Nichols or Carruth, but I'll look them up soon. I'm anxious to know what I'm missing in that regard, hell for inspiration if nothing else.

Tennessee coat argument doesn't hold water. MaMei not "lying" when he said America's founding fathers are not a politician. In fact, some people at a point in their life operation office or hold office there is no need to let them "politician" -- the "politician" define each online dictionary:
A person for personal or party interests, often through the planning and control: "mother may still want their favorite son grow up to be President, but... they don't want them to become politicians process" (John f. Kennedy).